群眾集資，一種向社會大眾尋求資金挹注的行為，已經成為企業家在尋求外在金援，好讓新事業能夠起步發展的一種熱門募資手段。有別於計畫申請書、學術論文、技術報告或專利文件等文類都已有特定的群體為受眾，且在撰寫時需遵循嚴謹的格式與規範；群眾集資的文案幾乎沒有模板可以參照。本研究致力於探究群眾集資圈裡，帶有推銷意味的文句特點、集資專案的行文潛規則，以及應用於其中具說服功能的語言表現。
正由於集資文案缺乏常規框架可供效法，大多數標榜以字詞頻率、關鍵字、詞彙匯集、正規表示法為基礎原則的文體分析工具（如WordSmith和Sketch Engine），皆不足以掌握描繪說服性語彙的特色。本研究使用名為電腦閱讀器之自然語言處理（NLP）工具來剖析150個Kickstarter文案裡的所有句字，深入進到每個子句或片語中去發掘語言特性。主要的研究發現為：(1)破碎式寫作手法；(2)非正式與口語化；(3)凸顯稀有性和緊迫性；(4)頻繁使用強調式列舉；(5)採用複數人稱「我們」；(6)運用行動言詞；(7)重複與反覆性；(8)「你」的直接式稱呼；(9)反詰問句，以及(10)利用專家意見或媒體報導進行背書。

Crowdfunding, the act of soliciting monetary support from the general public, has already become a popular approach for entrepreneurs to obtain external capital so as to get their new business off the ground. Unlike other genres such as grant proposals, academic essays, technical reports or patent application documents whose audience belong to specialized communities and which have a strict format or “moves” for writers to follow, crowdfunding project pitches almost do not have template to refer to. The present study strives to reveal the characteristics of promotional texts used in the context of crowdfunding community, uncover the norm of crowdfunding pitches and identify the persuasive elements applied in crowdfunding projects.
Due to the lack of writing models or formal styles in fundraising pitches, most genre analytical tools (e.g. WordSmith, Sketch Engine) that are based on word frequency, key terms, concordance, and regular expression rules are found to be short for describing the characteristics of persuasive language. This project uses an NLP tool called the computer reader to parse through all sentences of 150 Kickstarter pitching texts, to go deeper inside clauses and phrases to find linguistic features that are unknown to researchers before investigation. The main findings are: (1) fragmentary style of writing, (2) informal and colloquial, (3) emphasis of scarcity and urgency and exclusiveness, (4) frequent use of emphatic enumerations, (5) employment of plural pronoun “we”, (6) utilization of performative utterance, (7) repetition and recursion, (8) direct form of address “you”, (9) rhetorical questions and (10) endorsement of media coverage or expert opinion.

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